Greenhouse effect as big a threat as arms race, say scientists

Published on Thursday 28 May 2009 20:20

CLIMATE change poses as great a threat as the nuclear arms race, scientists warned yesterday as they called on leaders to take action to tackle the problem.

The scientists and Nobel laureates attending a three-day conference hosting by St James's Palace drew up a memorandum calling for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015.

The memorandum from the experts, who included US energy secretary Steven Chu, said a new global deal on emissions expected at the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December was urgently needed.

It must commit to cut worldwide greenhouse gases by half by 2050, the document urged.

And while developed countries should take the lead, with cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020, every nation must act, on the "firm assumption that all others will also act".

Prof Hans Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said he believed that with "probably the biggest concentration of brains on the planet" drawing up the memorandum, it could be more vital than many mass demonstrations on climate change.

He likened the statement to the manifesto signed by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell against nuclear proliferation in the 1950s.

The manifesto says global warming poses a threat of similar proportions to the risks to civilisation of thermonuclear weapons and should be tackled in similar ways, with all scientists contributing to solving the problem.

The memorandum from the conference, which heard from the Prince of Wales yesterday on the importance of preserving rain forests, said that without protecting tropical forests, there was no solution to tackling climate change.